In the sixties I made a point to see movies with Vincent Price, especially movies based on stories by Poe. So why did I miss War Gods of the Deep, based on Poe's “City In the Sea”? I don't know. I wasn’t aware of it, or was busy doing something else, I guess. I’ve still never seen the movie, and can't comment on it. But the comic book adaptation, which came out in 1965, is well done. The artwork is credited by the Grand Comics Database to John Tartaglione, inked by Dick Giordano. There's a lot of photo reference in the panels, but at least the characters look like the actors in the movie.
Dell had a weird numbering system for comics in the Movie Classics line, and this one is considered to be #900.
5 comments:
Oh snap this movie is online 4 FREE: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xltic5_war-gods-of-the-deep_shortfilms#.UXSAoLVwroI Directored by Jacques Tourneur, he was a badass yo OMG!! Now my sistar wants 2 D8 a gill man
Alicia, thanks for the information and link. I missed my opportunity to watch it when I had time the past few days...I'll be busy with family the next couple of weeks.
Good luck to Deb with her gill man aspirations. Personally, I stay away from seafood and creatures of the deep...and I demand if I don't eat them they don't eat me.
I actually saw this movie in the theater when it first came out. I remember it being rather claustrophobic before I really knew what that word meant. But you're right, Vincent was always worth watching.
The likeness of Vincent Price is pretty good in this one; and seafood in infinite variety is always a plus with me. Even sushi!
I have a bad copy of this on tape from a local station back in the 80's. WAR-GODS was the first AIP "Poe" flick after Roger Corman called it quits, but the studio stil wanted "MORE!!!" (just like Marilyn Chambers-- heh). Louis M. Heyward (no relation to the actor, I think) produced or co-wrote some serious BOMBS for AIP. While Corman's films somehow managed to transcend their budgets (WHAT A GUY!) and can be viewed (in my view) as "works of ART!!!", Heyward's trademark is scripts that feel like they needed at least one more draft before they were well-done.
WAR-GODS (as you may have noticed) is a generic "Jules Verne" story labored on top of "Poe". You've got elements of Captain Nemo, "Journey to the Center of the Earth", and maybe a few others I'm not aware of. Price, classy as ever, comes off more deranged and less reasonable (or logical) than usual, as if "Robur The Conqueror" somehow survived, went into hiding under the Earth, and then went completely insane (as he did in Verne's own sequel).
But perhaps the film is most notorious for its endless, ENDLESS "action" scenes underwater in which virtually nothing seems to ever happen, and it's almost impossible to follow the "plot".
My own favorite post-Corman "Poe" is THE OBLONG BOX, which actually takes a good part of its plot from "The Premature Burial" and mixes it with VOODOO, then in its 2nd half, abruptly turns into a Victorian-era SLASHER film. The guy even wears a mask to hide his face, just like Michael Myers in HALLOWEEN!
I watched that one several times when I suddenly realized there was a MAJOR lapse in logic early-on that cold have been fixed with one or two lines of dialogue, which could have improved the plot tremendously. Oh well...
Gee, I wonder if they did a comic-book based on that one?
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